About 1.5 million protesters hit the streets across Brazil on Sunday in a major show of anger against leftist President Dilma Rousseff, who faces crises from a faltering economy to a massive corruption scandal at state oil giant Petrobras.

Many called for the impeachment of Rousseff, less than six months after she was narrowly returned to power in the most bitterly fought presidential race since the end of a military dictatorship in 1985.

The biggest demonstration took place in Sao Paulo, where a million people rallied — according to police estimates — many in the distinctive yellow and green of Brazil’s national football team. The city — South America’s biggest, and Brazil’s business and industrial hub — is a stronghold of opposition to Rousseff.

Peaceful demonstrations also took place in 83 cities and towns around the country, including major protests in the capital Brasilia and in Rio de Janeiro.

The latest protests coincide with the 30th anniversary of the year in which Brazil’s military dictatorship ended and democracy was restored. In recent days, Brazilians have debated whether the demonstrations would mark a milestone for democratic expression and free speech or, conversely, signal the country’s unwillingness to obey the verdict of the ballot box when times turn tough.

Will the protests make a difference? Only if the people of Brazil are deteermined to strengthen the institutions that guarantee transparency and the rule of law.

In an inauguration ceremony that was upbeat but drew sparse applause and little spontaneous celebration by her supporters, Ms. Rousseff extolled her legacy of poverty reduction while outlining a vision to get Latin America’s largest economy back on track.

“We will prove that it is possible to make adjustments to the economy without repealing rights that have been won or betray social commitments,” she said in a speech in Brazil’s Congress attended by cabinet members, foreign dignitaries, allied lawmakers and other officials.

But the darkest cloud on the horizon for Ms. Rousseff might be the fast-moving corruption scandal at Petrobras.

Brazilian prosecutors allege that executives at Petrobras conspired with construction companies to inflate the cost of contracts, skimming off as much as $1.5 billion, by the estimate of Brazil’s budget watchdog, to enrich themselves while funneling kickbacks to Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and its allies.

Ms. Rousseff hasn’t been implicated in the scandal, and leaders of her party have repeatedly denied allegations of involvement. Police have already filed charges against 36 suspects, including two former Petrobras officials.

There are two things to bear in mind:
1. The enormous amounts of money handled through Petrobras (and the temptation/opportunities for corruption)
2. Brazil’s antecedents when it comes to scandals and prosecutions

Two weeks ago (26/10) took place the presidential election in Brazil. By a narrow gap of votes (3%) Dilma Rousseff, the current president and candidate for the socialist Workers Party, was reelected.

Although the international community reported the election as democratic, this is not the perception of significant part of the Brazilians. The election was marred by allegations of corruption and embezzlement of public funds by the Rousseff’s campaign. Other sordid attitudes were taken by the socialists during the election, for example:

– the constant threat of ending the food allowance of the poor people if Rousseff was not reelected;
– attack to the building of the largest circulation magazine in the country, which had denounced government corruption;
– incitement to prejudice and confrontation between Brazilians from the south and north, etc.

But what’s even scarier is that there were evidences of fraud in the elections, and the Brazilian authorities are silent about that. The Superior Electoral Court, the highest court of the election, is chaired by a Workers Party former lawyer. The defeated candidate Aecio Neves, who belongs to the Social Democratic Party, accepted the result quickly and without question. People are outraged and there is no leadership to guide them and give them voice.

That growing wave of outrage is taking the streets. Last Saturday, thousands of people protested in major cities across the country calling for an audit of the election, the investigation of complaints and, if proven, the impeachment of President Rousseff. All this is being muted and distorted by the Brazilian media, which is totally left-biased.

Rousseff and the Workers Party are implanting the Bolivarian comunism in Brazil. And that should concern the Americans as well, because the growth of bolivarian regimes in Latin American is the result of a major plan put into action by an international enemy called Sao Paulo Forum. The Sao Paulo Forum is the most powerfull political organization in Latin America. It was created in the 90’s by Fidel Castro and Lula to “recover in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe”. You can read more about the Sao Paulo Forum here:http://bit.ly/1usa4DV.

With the petition to the White House (http://1.usa.gov/1tJ5bUN) the Brazilians are not expecting any kind of support from president Obama itself, of course, because we know well what we can expect from liberals. But the White House and the US government is much more than Obama and the liberals: we would like to talk to the good American citizens concerned with the future of our continent. And this petition serves two purposes:

1) call the attention of Americans regarding the political situation on the continent, especially the alignment of the Bolivarian communist regimes with declared enemies of the United States, such as Russia and Iran.

2) put in circulation in the US and international media the name of the real enemy that must be fought on the American continent: the Sao Paulo Forum, the agent that is creating a new soviet union in Latin America.

I would be very grateful if you could help spread this petition among your family, friends, and readers of you website: http://1.usa.gov/1tJ5bUN

On 10/26, Dilma Rousseff was reelected, and will continue his party’s plan to establish a communist regime in Brazil – the Bolivarian molds propounded by the Foro de São Paulo. We know that in the eyes of the international community, the election was fully democratic, but the ballot boxes used are not reliable, apart from the fact the heads of the judiciary, are mostly members of the winning party. Social policies also influenced the choice of the president, and people were threatened with losing their food allowance if they do not re-elect Dilma. We call a White House position in relation to communist expansion in Latin America. Brazil does not want and will not be a new Venezuela, and the USA that need help the promoters of democracy and freedom in Brazil.
Created: Oct 28, 2014

Neves’s acceptance of the results may be due to several factors, which, unfortunately, I am unable to discuss since I am not well-versed enough on Brazil’s internal politics. However, Merlo is accurate when he says that the Foro de Sao Paolo was Castro and Lula’s creation.

The vote shows a deep division in the country between the richer South and the poorer North. The North has been the largest recipient of social welfare programs from the Federal government. It is precisely because of these welfare policies that a large majority of people in the North voted for Rousseff, giving her a narrow margin of victory. . The business sector, unhappy with high taxes and other obstacles imposed on them definitely voted against Rousseff. The middle class, that was the key to the protests over the poor quality of health and educational services last year, also voted against Rousseff.

Bottom line, it is populist policies that enabled Rousseff to get reelected.

As Fleischman says,

Populism is not just an economic burden. It also makes the party in power feel more complacent and entitled as it enjoys a degree of popularity.

Many Neves supporters, hailing largely from Brazil’s wealthier south, joked they would be packing their bags to flee to Miami or Orlando. Some posted images showing Brazil divided into two, with the poorer northeastern states which supported Ms. Rousseff hived off into a separate country.

Brazil’s benchmark equity index led global declines as President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election damped speculation for a change in policies that wiped out $553 billion of stock market value and left the economy in recession.

The Ibovespa (IBOV) dropped 2.8 percent to 50,503.66 at the close of trading, the most among the 20 biggest indexes globally. After tumbling as much as 6.2 percent earlier, approaching the threshold for a bear market, the gauge pared losses as education companies and pulp exporters rallied. The real posted the world’s biggest loss as it sank 1.9 percent to a nine-year low.

After years of weak growth, high inflation and intervention, Dilma’s re-election tanked the currency, too,

The real’s plunge to 2.5224 per dollar put it at the weakest level on a closing basis since April 2005. One-month implied volatility on options for the real, reflecting projected shifts in the currency, was the world’s highest. The currency sank 12 percent in the past three months.

“To some extent, markets were already pricing in her victory last week, and that may explain why the reaction to the election results wasn’t as negative as I expected,” Alvaro Marangoni, a partner at Quadrante Investimentos Ltda., said by phone from Sao Paulo. “We’re all waiting to see if policies are adjusted so the economy can recover.”

First Uruguay: Same old, same old, in age and in politics,
Since Pepe Mujica could not run for a second term according to the Uruguayan Constitution, an election took place yesterday, which now goes to a runoff

Leftist ruling coalition candidate Tabare Vazquez led Uruguay’s presidential election on Sunday but he fell short of a first-round victory and will go to a runoff vote next month with the country’s pioneering marijuana bill hanging in the balance.

Vazquez of the Broad Front coalition said as results trickled in that the race would go to a second round and he is likely to face a nerve-jangling contest against young center-right opposition candidate, Luis Lacalle Pou.

Exit polls showed Vazquez winning 44-46 percent of the vote compared with 31-33 percent for Lacalle Pou of the National Party.

The 74 year old Vazquez first was president in 2005, and it looks like he’s going for a rerun. Lacalle Pou is 41.

Neither Lula nor Ms. Rousseff seem to care about development. According to Goldman Sachs , from 2004-13 government spending grew at almost 8% a year, in real terms, which was more than twice the rate of GDP growth. Inflation is now 7% year-over-year on prices for goods and services not regulated by price controls and 8.6% for services alone. Inflationary expectations are rising.
…
More worrying is the damage the PT might do to institutions and the rule of law over another 48 months. Civil society here jealously guards civil liberties and pluralism. But as one astute businessman told me, “We are noticing, bit by bit, a trend toward copying Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. The tendency is to reduce democracy.” One example is Ms. Rousseff’s May decree empowering “popular councils,” which would move the country away from representative democracy à la Venezuela. Congress has so far refused to approve the measure but if the usual vote-buying goes on, that may change.

To celebrate, Dilma wore a suit that matched the drapes and her politics,

The primary deficit (before interest payments) reached 14.4 billion reais ($5.9 billion) in that month, the fourth in a row in which the government has failed to put aside cash to pay creditors. The consolidated primary surplus in the eight months to August stood at just 0.3% of GDP. Most of that came from the states; the central government managed just 1.5 billion reais, a piffling 0.05% of GDP and the worst result for the period since 1998. The overall budget deficit climbed to 4% of output, the highest level since Ms Rousseff’s predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, embarked on a huge stimulus package in 2009, as the global financial crisis took hold.

In turn,

On September 30th the ratings agency told an investors’ conference in São Paulo that it will refrain from re-appraising Brazil’s credit risk until 2016, once it becomes apparent what the next government is doing to tackle weak growth (which will average just 1.5-1.7% a year during Ms Rousseff’s four years in power), and a wonky budget.

On paper, Marina Silva, candidate of the centrist Brazilian Socialist party, promises a more responsible fiscal policy. So does Aécio Neves of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, the most market-friendly of the main contenders.

The odds odds Neves winning are slim-to-none. Silva is getting a lot of media attention, particularly in foreign media outlets, but Dilma will most likely win, as a commenter points out,

Perhaps you`re right, and that awful woman will be reelected. But not only because she has a “huge… and well funded political machine”. She also has absolutely no scruples whatsoever about lying, scheming and – most importantly – putting the gigantic State machine to work full-time for her campaign. Disgraceful. Worse times ahead for us Brazilians.

For the moment, all eyes are on Brazil, which is in a technical recession and expected to grow by less than 1 percent this year. That means the election will largely turn on voters’ perceptions of who can best lift the world’s eighth-largest economy out of the doldrums.

In 2010, the year Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla and hand-picked choice of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was elected, the economy grew 7.5 percent. It slowed to 2.7 percent the following year as the shocks of the global financial crisis took their toll.

But as other Latin American economies improved, Rousseff, stubbornly sticking to centralized economic policy, hasn’t been able to rekindle growth.

After a fast rise, Ms. Silva appears to be fading as she heads into this Sunday’s first round of voting. She surged in the polls after announcing that she would run for president in the place of running mate Eduardo Campos, who died in a plane crash Aug. 13. Voters fed up with politics as usual flocked to her in the early going. So did investors and businessmen who liked her market-friendly mix of ideas for getting tough on inflation and reducing state interference in the economy.

But a barrage of television attack ads by Ms. Rousseff has taken a toll on Ms. Silva, who so far has been unwilling and unable to respond in kind. Under Brazil’s unique election laws, Ms. Silva has only a fraction of the TV time allotted to Ms. Rousseff and third-place candidate Aécio Neves in the initial round of voting. Ms. Silva has also refused to go negative in her own campaign ads, despite encouragement from supporters to fight back.

Questions about her toughness persisted after she cried in front of a reporter following an interview. And her campaign has appeared disorganized and unprepared at times, lacking the depth and experience of Ms. Rousseff’s team.

Ms. Silva doesn’t need the support of farmers like Mr. Ceolin to win the elections in October—an initial Oct. 5 vote and what polls indicate will be an inevitable runoff. All the polls taken since she officially became the Socialists’ candidate, replacing the late candidate Eduardo Campos, show her beating incumbent Dilma Rousseff in the Oct. 26 runoff.

But if she becomes president, strong opposition from Brazil’s wealthy and influential agricultural sector could make governing more difficult, said Paulo Calmon, a political-science professor at the University of Brasilia.

Additionally,

Ms. Silva promises to end Ms. Rousseff’s policy of forcing state-controlled oil company Petrobras to subsidize the price of gasoline to help control inflation, a policy that ethanol producers have strongly criticized because cheaper gasoline boosts competition for ethanol fuel. The Silva stance doesn’t just play to farmers: The prospect of less interference with Petrobras has boosted the company’s shares, and the benchmark Ibovespa stocks index, to the highest levels in more than a year.

Will see how it all develops; Guido Mantega, the finance minister for the last eight years, is on his way out.